Category Archives: Peak bagging

Drove up to Pinal this morning to swap out some equipment. Getting to/from Pinal from the highway isn’t difficult, just 18 miles, with 12 of them on a really great-condition (at least until the rains come) dirt road.

Once I was finished with my other hobby, I started down the road and parked at the Signal Peak turnoff (651B). As I’d never been to Signal, and I’d never used the mobile PeakBagger app to record a hike, I was able to do both and learn a thing or two or three new things.

The first thing I learned was that Signal was less than 300′ minimum prominence, and that’s what I’d set my PeakBagger filter for, so Signal didn’t show up until I dialed that down to 250′.

No comms sites on this peak, but Ord, Pinal, Towers, Greens, White Tank and many more sites were reachable on my FT-60. Handy in case of trouble.

Holy quercus turbinella and manzanita, Batman!

After reviewing my mashup of Arizona 2000′ Prominence and 25 Miles Isolation, and seeing the remaining southwestern Arizona peaks I was not going to get to this spring as it’s gotten too bloody hot already, it looked like Mazatzal Peak might be the next candidate. With a 4100′ trailhead only 75 miles from the house, this 7903′ peak was the next closest on my list.

Friday the 6th I set the alarm for 0345, but somewhere before 0345 I must have deactivated the alarm so I awakened at 0700. Thought about it for a bit, and decided instead to not hike. Later on, I’d live to appreciate that decision.

Saturday afternoon I again set the alarm for 0345, and I was up at 0345 Sunday morning, wondering if I really wanted to get out of bed. Nonetheless, by 0415 I had already collected the first of two supertankers of diet Mountain Dew at the local Circle K, and was headed east on Shea through Fountain Hills and then up AZ-87 to the Mazatzal Wilderness just west of Rye.

I thought I’d carefully researched the challenge of the climb up Mazatzal; I read the postings of Casserly, Gaudet, Kassan, McCann, Nuernberger, Poulin, Rankine, and Sexauer. Some were pretty sparse with description. I downloaded into both the phone and the Garmin the GPS logs of Kassan, Poulin, Rankine and McEntee. It was especially good that McEntee had summited the peak only 4 days before me.

On the drive, I hydrated like hell, with about 3 l of diet Mountain Dew, a half gallon of water, all after 4 bags of instant breakfast oatmeal. My (kook) theory is, the oatmeal slows the intestines down and lets the liquid absorb…

Arrived at Barnhardt trailhead around 0620. Interestingly, it was partly cloudy, smelled humid, and the sun was hidden behind low clouds. The tops of the nearby peaks were shrouded. Temperature around 62° F. Dead calm. Watch the video to see how the weather changed over the day.

My plan was to go in via the Barnhardt, climb the broad ridge followed by Rankine and McEntee, and then decide which way to come down. I had Kassan’s ascent route in the GPS, but I’d be following it backward, and he’d mentioned a severe lack of cairns on the cliff section.

On trail at 0634, 28 minutes after sunrise.

Barnhardt trail wilderness boundary marker.

The Barnhardt was a cakewalk, relatively speaking. Good footing, generally easy grade, and I was in the shadows until the combination of sun position and a break in clouds at 0740.

Almost exactly 2 hours into the walk, I arrived at the point where both Rankine and McEntee left the trail and headed up the side of the mountain. While McEntee had chosen the “creekbed” for his climb, Rankine more or less chose the hump of a ridge immediately west. I didn’t want to boulder-hop the drainage, I chose the Rankine path.

From this point, I couldn’t find so much as a goat trail while snagging myself on straggly pine-like bushes/trees, whacked in the face with branches, assaulted by thorny shrubberies, until I got about 500′ south and 200′ higher.

At the above vantage point, if one looks really carefully, the cut containing the Barnhardt trail is visible far below.However, in the foreground, one can see dense copses of burned stumps and grey sticks.

While the slope above was reasonably clear of obstacles, the nasty patchy clumps of what could charitably be described as centimetric extemely pointy thorns, supported by leafless, tall, grey-skinned branches and trunks, would prove to be painful and not without a little blood lost.

Looking at the top of the ridge, a pair of pine trees was beckoning. Between me and them were hundreds of downed trees in various stages of decomposition, with unknown peril in footing. And more of the grey-skinned needle trees.

Nearing the top of the ridge, the two pine trees lied to me that they were near the top of the mountain.

Nearly to the pine trees, the far left distance showed what looked to be Mazatzal, but it, too, was a lie.

By now, and around the 7000′ level, I was completely winded, getting a headache, and feeling a little queasy. Slowly it dawned on me that I hadn’t been above 1400′ AMSL for anything but short periods of time over the past 9 months.

The plateau beyond the pine trees was large and pretty much covered in all sorts of prickly vegetation, manzanita groves, more of the grey-skinned stuff, cacti, or more downed trees. Picking a route through the morass was daunting. Generally, I aimed slightly west of south to pick up the line that Rankine, McEntee and Poulin had used. The good thing about that path was that it was more often on hard rock, so there was less of the nasty shrubberies.

Finally, the prominence of Mazatzal was visible, What a massive pile of layered metamorphosed sedimentary rock, with red rhyolite atop, striking NNW/SSE and dipping steeply to the east.

By now it was around noon, and I was really flagging. I’d stayed hydrated, ate a Stinger gel pack or a Clif bar every hour or so, but the lack of trail and the altitude had really smacked me.

Finally at the summit. While only 3:28 elapsed moving time, it had taken me over 6 hours to get here. It was quite breezy, air temp in mid-60s, and all the clouds had burned away.

Found the peak register. Please, the next person summiting bring a fresh notebook. McEntee improvised with a couple of scraps of cardboard, on which I added my arrival.

The ammo box with peak register is about 15′ south of the benchmark itself. Inside the ammo can is a two-way FRS radio, some spare alkaline batteries, and a disposable lighter. Forgot to try the radio or lighter to see if either still worked.

Did not spend a lot of time atop the mountain. Already exhausted, I was glad that I’d started early, and that there were five more hours to sunset. After a bit of rumination, I chose to descend via the route that Kassan had taken in his assent; it was only 4.9 miles to the trailhead via the Shake Tree trail.

Jumpin’ bejeezus, the south side was tough. Manzanita forests, parsed only by repose-angle rivers of rockfall. Again, from Kassan’s assent notes, cliffs were avoidable; dropping the almost 2000′ to the Shake Tree required no dangerous exposures, no more than maybe a 6′ drop or ten, and sometimes even a cairn would show up, providing tantalizing evidence that other bipeds had been there.

I am really glad that I was wearing my standard hiking costume: long pants, long-sleeved shirt, and the broad-brimmed hat with neck drape. And I checked every once in a while that I could get into one of the distant amateur radio repeaters in case something bad happen. And really weirdly, the AT&T coverage remained generally ok.

It took three hours to get down the 2000′. I was hammered. I was falling more than I was walking! The manzanita forests were dense, with painful scrub oak undergrowth. And hidden everywhere were cacti and yucca. Oh, and it definitely looked like there was poison oak.

The iPhone’s GPS didn’t have the necessary sensitivity to give me a position fix to know where I was relative to the Shake Tree, but I finally picked a wash to descend, knowing that I’d meet the trail eventually. At 1610, in the pine forest, I arrived at what appeared to be a real trail. The realization that I was on the Shake Tree came, when in a dense canopied area I saw what looked to be a trail, at the right elevation, and especially because someone had left atop a big rock a large plastic bag of Spitz sunflower seeds. I dumped the seeds on the ground, for the gentle woodland creatures, and put the empty bag in my trash pocket.

The rest of the return was on the Shake Tree, and while not as nice as the Barnhardt, it was way better than no trail at all. Made it back to the vehicle at 1812, for a total trip time of 11:43 and total elevation gain of 4840′.

My boots finally blew out on this hike, the tread had just about gone but the outer inner cloth of the left foot, just above the leather, got shredded. Was a combo of 150 – 200 miles on the boots over hard Arizona desert, and the manzanitas, thorns, and rocks on this trip. Have a brand new pair in the back of the truck just waiting to get dirty.

While I did it, and I returned to tell the tale, this is one of those hikes that will take a while before the pain fades and instead I remember fondly.

No radio sites, just a nice, challenging, quiet hike on a somewhat cool and breezy day.

Looking up at Woolsey from the northside trailhead.

There are sheer cliffs and difficult escarpments everywhere.

The way up is to pick the right river of lava boulders and other detritus.

However, it’s not easy a priori to know the best route. Boulders can be loose, and i stepped on one, it rolled, and I crash-landed.

Lava-rock-boulder rivers near or at angle of repose. While a 2′ size boulder appears to weigh a lot, putting one’s weight into it for purchase can cause it to shift or break loose.

This is the true Gila Peak (Woolsey Peak) benchmark.

From the top of the mountain looking due north. The vertical beige strip is the final section of the dirt road with the trailhead at the bottom (south) end. The rivers of lava rock are punctuated with bunch grass.

Another view north.

From the false peak.

Looking to the west from the benchmark.

Somebody disposed of a lead-acid car battery here a long time ago. What it was powering up here on the summit is a mystery.

From that battery, bits of lead plate everywhere.

Another view to the north. The trailhead is at the close end of the road below. The nice thing is one can see the trailhead and their vehicle pretty much all the time during the hike. Of course, if something bad happens down at the trailhead, there’s not much one can do from this vantage other than watch, unless one has a very powerful rifle %^)

View to the east from the benchmark; White Tank to the left and the Sierra Estrella to the right.

Looking to the SE over many lava-flow ridges. Table Top is on the horizon to the left of center.

The White Tank mountains are way off in the distance.

The back side of the Sierra Estrella range; the characteristic shape of Sierra Estrella high point is quite distinctive.

One of the BM locations, desert varnish and graffiti.

One of the peak registers.

Time to return to the truck. It always seems to me to be harder the do the return than the ascent; here, it was mostly boulder-hopping down the slope, keeping aim on distant horizon features to maintain the right azimuth, and paying attention to the next step to avoid boulders likely to move or the possibility of critters, none of which were seen on this trip.

While one vehicle had arrived at the trailhead, turned around, and then left during my hike, there were no other signs of folks having been here during my time.

The drive back out to old US 80 was uneventful. Stopped by 8-Bit Ale Works on the way back for a pint.